If you want to maximize your affiliate commissions, displaying products on your website in an appealing, strategic format is crucial. Two of the most popular WordPress plugins used by affiliate marketers for creating product showcases are AAWP and Lasso.
But what exactly is the difference between these two platforms? How do AAWP and Lasso compare in terms of features, use cases, and overall benefits for affiliate marketers?
In this comprehensive comparison guide, we’ll thoroughly analyze AAWP and Lasso side-by-side so you can decide which solution may be better suited for your specific needs and goals.
What is AAWP?
AAWP stands for Amazon Affiliate WordPress Plugin. As the name suggests, it is a plugin developed specifically for Amazon Associates members to help them promote Amazon products on their WordPress website.
Some of the key capabilities AAWP provides include:
- The ability to automatically create product feeds, comparison tables, and other displays for showcasing Amazon items on your site.
- Seamlessly pulling in live product data like pricing, images, ratings and more directly from Amazon through API integration. This ensures your product displays are always up to date.
- Building best seller lists, top rated lists, new releases lists and other dynamic displays based on Amazon product categories and inventory.
- Generating customizable product boxes with support for different layouts like grids, carousels and more to best showcase Amazon products.
- Support for geo-targeting site visitors to their closest local Amazon store when they click your affiliate links. This helps increase conversions.
- Integration with Google Analytics to provide click tracking on your Amazon affiliate links so you can view performance.
- Access to the Amazon Product Advertising API so you can pull in accurate real-time data on the Amazon products you are promoting.
The key benefit of AAWP is that it is purpose-built for Amazon affiliates. All of the features revolve around helping you promote Amazon products in the most effective way possible on your WordPress website.
However, the significant drawback is that AAWP only works with Amazon affiliate links. You cannot use it to display or track products, links, or offers from any other affiliate program outside of the Amazon Associates platform.
What is Lasso?
Lasso is a more flexible, all-in-one affiliate management plugin for WordPress. Rather than specializing solely for Amazon like AAWP, Lasso aims to provide a complete solution for managing links and displaying affiliate products from any program or network.
Some of Lasso’s major capabilities include:
- A centralized dashboard that allows you to easily manage links from any external affiliate network, not just Amazon. You can add links from networks like ShareASale, Clickbank, eBay Partner Network, individual retailer programs, etc.
- The ability to automatically track clicks and sales for your affiliate links throughout your website. This provides visibility into your conversions.
- Generating cloaked affiliate links that use your own domain name instead of ugly external URLs. This allows you to brand your links for a better user experience.
- Access to a library of 100+ professional display templates to showcase affiliate products and offers. These range from comparison tables to top product lists, product grids, carousels, and more.
- Promoting products from over 9,000+ different affiliate programs by automatically applying and getting approval for relevant networks.
- Integration with the Amazon Product Advertising API to still allow you to easily pull in product details like pricing and imagery for Amazon items you want to showcase.
- Built-in analytics to track performance metrics like views, clicks, and conversions for each display or product you are promoting through affiliate links. This identifies high-performing opportunities.
The major advantage of Lasso is the flexibility it provides to promote products and services from any affiliate program, not just Amazon. The breadth of display templates is another benefit that helps effectively showcase affiliate offers.
One potential downside is that manually managing links from multiple external networks involves more work versus AAWP which handles Amazon products more automatically.
Now that we’ve provided a general overview of both AAWP and Lasso, let’s dig into a detailed feature-by-feature comparison of these two popular affiliate marketing plugins.
Ease of Use
When it comes to beginner-friendliness and ease of use, both AAWP and Lasso have their merits, but Lasso appears to cater slightly better to affiliate marketing beginners.
With AAWP, the initial setup process is relatively straightforward. An installation wizard guides you through establishing the plugin, connecting your Amazon API credentials, and configuring basic settings step-by-step.
For Amazon products in particular, AAWP makes it very easy to search Amazon’s catalogue and add specific items you want to promote into product displays or comparison tables with just a few clicks.
However, some of AAWP’s more advanced functionality around customizing displays or utilizing certain advanced features can seem complex to newcomers. So there is a bit more of a learning curve beyond the basics.
With Lasso, the overall user experience feels a bit more polished and intuitive upfront. Navigating the plugin dashboard feels very simple with helpful step-by-step guidance.
Lasso offers extensive documentation resources with getting-started guides, an affiliate blog covering tips and tutorials, and videos walking through key features from a beginner’s perspective.
The process of embedding displays into your pages is also very straightforward for beginners with Lasso’s Gutenberg blocks that allow you to add tables, grids, or other displays with just a few clicks.
The main area Lasso involves a bit more work is when it comes to manually managing links from multiple external affiliate programs beyond just Amazon. This can involve more steps compared to AAWP which streamlines specifically Amazon links.
Overall though, for those totally new to affiliate marketing, Lasso appears to provide a better beginner user experience with more guidance resources and a very intuitive interface to grasp the tool quickly.
AAWP still makes it relatively easy to get up and running with Amazon promotions in particular but has a bit steeper learning curve beyond the initial setup process.
Customization Options
When it comes to customizing the appearance of product displays like comparison tables, product boxes, and other widgets used to promote affiliate links, Lasso provides much more design flexibility versus AAWP.
AAWP does offer some helpful customization capabilities. You can change certain elements like colors, fonts, button styles, borders, and more on the product displays generated. Additional CSS can also be injected for further customization access.
However, the options tend to be much more limited compared to other affiliate plugins. For users wanting to precisely match displays to their brand style guide or implement more creative designs, AAWP can quickly become restrictive.
Lasso on the other hand provides extremely robust customization capabilities through its drag and drop editor. No coding expertise is required.
With Lasso, you can customize literally every element of a display down to colors, button text and styles, spacing between elements, typography like font sizes and families, borders, backgrounds, and much more.
There are also hundreds of templates and styles you can start with and then further customize to achieve your ideal display design with just a few clicks.
Lasso also makes it easy to export parts of displays like buttons with your brand styles saved so you can easily reuse them. The customization possibilities are endless.
For affiliate marketers who want the creative freedom to craft product displays that align perfectly with their brand style guide, Lasso clearly provides far superior customization capabilities versus the relatively limited options in AAWP.
Pre-Made Display Templates
Both AAWP and Lasso provide access to pre-made display templates you can use as a starting point when configuring product promotions. However, Lasso once again dominates when it comes to the breadth of templates available.
AAWP offers a usable selection of templates for common displays like comparison tables, individual product boxes, best seller carousels, and more. However, the total number of templates feels limited.
When you want to experiment with other types of display styles beyond the template defaults, you’ll often need to manually edit shortcode which may not be intuitive for beginners.
With Lasso, you get access to an enormous library of over 100 different display templates encompassing:
- Comparison tables
- Top product lists
- Individual product boxes
- Carousels
- Content grids
- Inline links
- Review widgets
- And countless other varieties
Thanks to the massive template selection, you can easily test out a wide range of display styles and formats with just a few clicks to determine which option best converts site visitors into buyers.
Lasso also makes it seamless to swap to a different template without needing to edit shortcode manually. The visual editor makes style experimentation very intuitive.
For affiliates who want to A/B test an array of display options to find the ideal format that generates maximum clicks and commissions, Lasso’s vast template library is incredibly valuable.
Affiliate Program Support
Arguably the biggest differentiator between AAWP and Lasso is the affiliate programs that each platform supports.
As outlined earlier, AAWP exclusively supports the Amazon Associates program. No other affiliate network integrations are offered.
This means you can only display links, products, offers, and other promotions from Amazon using AAWP. Links or products from any external network cannot be shown.
Lasso takes the opposite approach providing completely open support for any affiliate program ranging from the large networks like ShareASale, Clickbank and eBay Partner Network to small niche-specific programs.
With Lasso, you can promote products from different merchants, networks, and programs all within the same plugin.
This flexibility is invaluable for diversifying affiliate earnings across multiple channels versus putting all eggs in the Amazon basket alone.
For affiliates focused squarely on the Amazon Associates program, AAWP may make sense. But those looking to leverage other lucrative affiliate programs will quickly find AAWP’s singular program support severely limiting.
Product Data Integration
When it comes to populating product displays with things like pricing, imagery, ratings and other descriptive details, AAWP shines in automating the retrieval of this data specifically for Amazon products.
Thanks to its tight integration with the Amazon Product Advertising API, AAWP can automatically pull the most up-to-date information on any Amazon item into your displays to ensure accuracy.
This automation and accuracy is a major benefit of AAWP. However, it is limited solely to Amazon’s catalogue of products.
For affiliate programs beyond Amazon, Lasso provides ways to manually input product data yourself. Though more labor intensive, this allows you to promote a diverse range of products.
Lasso also offers integrations with data sources like the Amazon Product Advertising API, ShareASale product feeds, and others to still auto-populate product details where possible. Support for more data integrations continues to expand.
The manual effort to populate product data can be seen as a drawback versus the automatic population AAWP provides for Amazon. But the benefit is Lasso’s flexibility to showcase a much broader range of affiliate products across programs.
Link Tracking and Analytics
When it comes to tracking performance metrics like clicks, impressions, and conversions for your affiliate links and product displays, Lasso has vastly more robust analytics and reporting built-in compared to AAWP.
With AAWP, since links are generated specifically for Amazon Associates, you must rely on your Amazon Associate account dashboard and Google Analytics external link tracking for performance visibility.
There is no centralized reporting on link metrics or product display engagement within AAWP itself. This makes evaluating the performance of specific displays and pages more difficult without extensive Google Analytics configuration.
Lasso on the other hand which is one of the Amazon Associates plugins for WordPress offers in-depth tracking and analytics capabilities directly within its WordPress dashboard.
You are provided performance insights like clicks, views, and conversions for each individual display or text link across your site. Granular metrics like click-through-rates and conversion rates are also calculated.
Lasso’s analytics identify both your top earning links but also underperforming links so you can assess opportunities to further optimize your promotional strategies.
For understanding the engagement and ROI generated from the time spent creating and placing affiliate links on your website, Lasso provides much more transparent and actionable data versus AAWP.
Pricing and Licensing
The pricing and license structure for AAWP and Lasso share some similarities but also key differences.
For AAWP, pricing starts at €49 annually for use on just 1 website domain. There are further tiers supporting up to 25 sites within a single license purchase.
So the model is domain-based, allowing you to use AAWP on a defined number of websites you own and manage based on the tier of license purchased.
Lasso similarly employs pricing tiers targeted at solo affiliate marketers up to digital agencies managing affiliate promos at scale. However, Lasso pricing is based on a monthly subscription versus one-time annual fee.
Lasso pricing starts at $39 per month for use on just 1 website and scales up based on number of sites needing support. A 14-day free trial is offered allowing you to test Lasso first.
For Amazon-focused affiliate marketers, AAWP’s annual licensing fee may involve a lower upfront cost versus Lasso’s monthly billing. However, Lasso’s pricing remains competitive for the robust feature set provided.
The benefit of a monthly subscription is flexibility if your affiliate business has changing needs over time.
Customer Support and Documentation
Top notch customer service and support resources are crucial for any WordPress plugin. Both AAWP and Lasso shine when it comes to providing exceptional support for users.
AAWP offers a detailed documentation portal with helpful guides, visual tutorials, and examples that cover getting started along with more advanced functions.
The AAWP team is also very responsive via email for any technical issues or questions users encounter. For community support, there is an active user forum where folks can discuss AAWP practices.
Lasso provides an equally impressive range of support resources. This includes extensive documentation, a video tutorial library, email assistance, and even live chat support for real-time answers.
There is also an affiliate marketing tips blog regularly publishing educational content for Lasso users looking to further optimize their promotional strategies.
Overall, both plugins back their tools with stellar customer service access and detailed knowledge bases. Users consistently praise both companies for providing exceptional user support.
Our Recommended Usage Scenarios
So when should you choose AAWP vs Lasso for your affiliate marketing needs? Here are our recommendations based on common affiliate website scenarios:
Affiliate Sites Focused Solely on Amazon
For affiliate marketers who are 100% focused just on the Amazon Associates program, AAWP is likely the better choice.
The entire feature set is purpose-built around Amazon making it easy to showcase those products efficiently.
Affiliate Sites Promoting Products From Multiple Networks
If you want to tap into affiliate earnings beyond just Amazon, promoting offers across a diverse range of programs, Lasso is likely the better fit.
With Lasso, you can easily evolve your promotions beyond one network to take advantage of many money-making opportunities.
Hybrid Approach Using Both Tools Together
Many successful affiliate marketers leverage both AAWP and Lasso together to get the best of both worlds.
They may use AAWP specifically for Amazon optimizations while leveraging Lasso across other affiliate programs and for links not related to products.
This hybrid approach lets you maximize results from both plugins based on their relative strengths and specializations.
For Most General Users
For most affiliates, especially those new to the concept, we suggest considering Lasso first.
It provides maximum flexibility to work with any program while still offering Amazon Associates integration. Using just Lasso allows you to keep your promotional options open as you evaluate potential earnings channels.
You can always incorporate AAWP down the road in addition to Lasso if you find the Amazon channel delivers significant opportunities. However, many affiliates find the best results by diversifying their efforts beyond Amazon alone.
The most important thing is carefully evaluating each plugin against your specific website model, goals, target affiliate programs, and more.
Both AAWP and Lasso deliver excellent results, just for different use cases, so consider which tool aligns closest to your needs.
Related:
Final Verdict
In summary, while both AAWP and Lasso provide robust toolsets to help affiliate marketers maximize commissions, some clear distinctions exist between the two platforms:
- AAWP caters specifically to Amazon Associates members while Lasso supports any affiliate program
- AAWP automates product data population while Lasso offers more display customization flexibility
- Lasso provides significantly more advanced analytics and tracking capabilities
- Lasso enables promoting a much wider range of affiliate programs and products
- AAWP streamlines Amazon product promotions while Lasso involves more hands-on link management
- AAWP provides a lower annual cost while Lasso is priced monthly but offers a free trial
Determining the right solution depends largely on your website’s focus – sole Amazon promotions vs a diverse affiliate strategy.
For most users, Lasso’s flexibility provides more growth opportunities over the long term while still offering robust Amazon integration as needed.
Hopefully, this extensive AAWP vs. Lasso comparison provides valuable insight to inform your decision when selecting the best affiliate marketing plugin for your website and objectives.